Flexibility at Genentech: Developing Versatile Domain Experts and Deploying Flexible Resources at One U.S. Medical Affairs Unit
Homa Bahrami and Stuart Evans
BerkeleyHass Case Series, 2016
The reality is that we need to be prepared for success,
and we need to be prepared for failure. Planning for failure will be as important as planning for success.
—MAURICIO SILVA DE LIMA, VICE PRESIDENT,
U.S. MEDICAL AFFAIRS – SPECTRUM, GENENTECH
In June 2013, Mauricio Silva de Lima, M.D., Ph.D., had just arrived in South San Francisco from Brazil to take over as Vice President of a newly formed Medical Unit (MU) in U.S. Medical Affairs at Genentech. Silva de Lima, who had joined the pharmaceutical industry a decade earlier after a career as a psychiatrist and professor, was preparing to lead the new MU, which had been formed as a result of a company-wide reorganization of the medical affairs function. This MU would be responsible for two new therapeutic areas—cardiovascular-metabolism and neuroscience—as well as a number of established products.
